Between President Barack Obama's successful 2008 online campaign and the myriad tactics government nominees employed this fall, the political sphere has provided many lessons in regards to online fundraising and communications.
A new website that will enable donors to compare how charities spend their money is to be launched this week.
More than 200,000 UK-registered charities will be listed on aliveandgiving.com, which will give donors access to charities' financial information and spending.
People will be able to search for charities on the site according to sector or location. A list of relevant charities will then appear with information next to each about how much of the donation will be spent on administration and on front-line services.
Start your donor relationships off right with prompt, polite thank-you notes, and start lighting the fire for your end-of-year appeals today.
Year-end online fundraising doesn't just happen in December. Here are nine practical steps fundraisers can take now to raise more money online in December.
The demographic sands are shifting — there will be an increasing number of older donors with more disposable income as the baby boomer generation matures, and those donors are going to have to use technology to support their nonprofit organizations of choice. With the likely long-term demise of checks as a method of payment, nonprofits are going to need to make sure their technology is incredibly easy to use so anyone can utilize it.
Just as "Internet Management for Nonprofits: Strategies, Tools & Trade Secrets" advises its readers to do, the book is available via different channels — including Kindle, online, e-mail updates and hardcover — and takes on the appropriate identity in each. Here, Hart explains more about how the book can benefit nonprofits:
In today's technology-driven world, it's crucial for fundraisers to get the most out of their websites. During their presentation at the 2010 Bridge Conference held July 26-28 in National Harbor, Md., Tucker Ball, director of online marketing at National Partnership for Women & Families; Kat Powers, online marketing manager at Conservation International; Dolores McDonagh, vice president of membership at National Trust for Historic Preservation; and Jessica Hood, director of consulting at Charity Dynamics provided nine tips to rewrite your website.
I just returned from a trip to Australia, and it’s interesting to me how different countries bring their own unique cultural context to online fundraising. There are also some important lessons to learn that we can import back into our North American fundraising mix.
As a young analyst at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Howard Bornstein witnessed the massive philanthropic impact of the Microsoft founder and his wife. Bornstein realized his best chance to have a remotely similar impact would be to sharpen the philanthropy of others.
The idea of using the Internet to help people not necessarily give more, but give better, was a goal that Bornstein developed at Stanford's Graduate School of Business with a fellow student — now business partner — Deyan Vitanov. Given the roughly $300 billion in annual charitable giving in the U.S., "you'd only have to change 1 percent to replicate, in theory, the impact of the entire Gates foundation," said Bornstein.
The Internet has transformed whole sectors of society, but it has had a more limited impact on the world of philanthropy. A recent survey by the Chronicle of Philanthropy found that among the top 400 U.S. charitable groups in 2009, the median share of giving that came through the Internet was just 1 percent. Now, two Silicon Valley websites, Bornstein's myphilanthropedia.org, and allthis.com, have ambitious plans to change that.
1. CHANGE TO MAKE:
Get online if you aren't already
It's 2010, and I hope you're online. If you're with the times, you're collecting donations on your website with a well-crafted, compelling and consistently branded donation page. You are using an e-mail campaign tool, not Outlook, to communicate with your community of 
supporters. You have a social-media strategy and are committing the time you need to achieve your clearly articulated, measurable goals. You continually assess how all of these efforts are performing against your targets. Your online and offline outreach is seamlessly integrated.
